what I want most of all is the weight of your fingers
on my neck, right where the blood pounds hardest,
where you and I both know how alive you make me come.
we've had so many late nights together but the paths
we walk diverged: I look for you across the chasm,
taking my own tentative steps forward and wishing
we could still balance against each other. now
alone in my sunrises, adrift in my early mornings,
I lean into the wind and wait to hear echoes from
the night before-- did she make you moan? did she
drag her nails down you just right? I gather my gravel
in both pockets, sifting it through anxious hands,
a counterweight to the way my stomach drops out
when I hear you call my name. you and I and these
heights, we will never be safe, we will never be still.

I worry about how I will know when I am dead.
Is it when the skin of other people
becomes unbearably hot? Against my own?
Will I lose color vision and see only
black and white, stark and gradient, the faces
no longer flushed with anger or lust or shame?
I worry about how I will know
when I am dead in case it happens and I
don't notice. If it is not a choice that I make
for myself, then what if I am not
cognizant of it? What if I die and there is still
the specter of you hanging over me,
how could I tell the difference? What if I die and
memories of you, branded on my body,
remain brighter than the afterlife?
What if I die and am still haunted, how
can I be freed?

such an ineloquent metaphor but
remember that time you put your dick in me
and it didn't even matter because
I was already pregnant with the pounds
of expectations you laid on me?

remember that time you could only hear
me say things you wanted or that
you liked, remember how I had learned to
deep throat and you said oh, you didn't
learn to push any farther than that?

remember the time when you went
home to your skinny wife after
cheating on her with me and then asking
me if I was going to the gym, if I was
doing enough cardio, if I was dieting?

remember that time when I was
working so hard to stand still and strong
inside of myself, to believe that I have
worth or beauty or value, remember that
time when I invited you in?

what comes of not knowing you well enough yet--
stumbling right into the rough parts of you, you are not
ready to share and I can only apologize for the invasion--
always slightly off balance-- and really all I want
is to make you smile and your impulse to do the same
for me is so heartening-- I just wish that
I could land easier in your life, without the weight of
my body, my history, my reflexes pounding down all at once--
like if I could actually be gentle or modest or any
of those traits I ought to have, I wish I had-- and while
I trust your lack of judgment, I am aiming
past acauaintanceship-- the impatience of me,
how deeply I desire the next several steps with you--
I propel myself backward with the force of my blood.

peace comes after we stop
giving up so much of ourselves
to purchase love from someone else.
I will be no less myself now
than yesterday or tomorrow;
you are welcome to stay or go,
as you please. I will show you
the best and the worst of myself,
all of the joy and the wreckage.
what I am is complex and beautiful
for its complexity, for where
the treasures are buried as well as
where the land mines lurk,
waiting to peel limbs or love from you.
the choice is yours, I will be
no less joyful or wrecked for it.

For him you will learn guilt, shame,
find yourself prevaricating for the first time
on subjects you thought you knew--
is this right? is this pain? is this real?--
and you will stumble. He will teach you
loss and lust, and how to feel both
simultaneously. What of yourself
do you lose for that unabashed desire?
(You cannot name it but you
sense its exodus, smell the burning off
of that sap from your blood.)
For him you will relearn how to speak
and be spoken to, how to run
as though you aren't practiced at escape,
how to make innocent eyes
from below him on the mattress.
You will hand over something more
entrenched than anything you've given away
before; the wrench of it will stretch
from your mouth to your cunt,
your gut will ache for its return--
is it love? is it trust? is it youth?--
and you will never be able to assess
its value. He will throw you
like shadows on the wall, the embers of you
will light up the space between
your mouths like summertime. For him
you will flush like a child, rebuked
by his silence for your faith,
but you will follow him to worship
every time, eyes wide, mouth shut.

in the third house we walked
to school, down the hill and through
the cemetery-- small limestone
bricks, no elaborate status, most of the names
long gone like their owners--
and across the creek, or through it,
depending on the weather.
(we had to be able to trust that the sun
would dry us by the time we were home.)
are these the secrets i didn't tell you?
are these the invisible soldiers
that stood between us, shoulder to shoulder,
while you and i peered over their helmets
at each others' wary faces? is this
what i could not share? you with your
invincible sense of place, your iron, salt,
cement and firmness: the hospital where your mom
suffered ten hours for you, her first; her
next apartment, blonde squatty cement
and you remember the pink of her bedroom
(she would only have been 21); the first house,
too far from the lake for a view but
close enough for the wind; and all of your
schools in a row, red brick, green grass, perfect
little football fields and playgrounds.
these are your touchstones, your environment
and the memories that swirl when you
walk into a room, or out on your mom.
what moves when i strain? dust?
i cannot remember, i have never revisited.
are these the separations which, inch by inch,
kept me from the heat of your love?
even if i knew, i could never reciprocate.
i have never desired the retracing of this path.

Your currency is more than skin, woman:

your pride is deeper than shape, your worth 

is more holy than the relics we wall up

to save from time and touch. 

You are upset that it cannot be photographed?

You wish you had something to show,

something to send that might serve his needs?

His fingerprints mark the patina of 

your bright and precious soul; do not

give in, woman, do not forgive.

Do not ever forget your own honor.

Do not let him forget that he is a guest

in a world of your making.

Without you, where are the children?

Without you, who kneads the bread?

Without you, who will set their soul aside

to cater to his whims? You may find goodness

in serving, you may find a sense of

what is best or least in you. It does not matter.

You are whole, and wholly your own.

Rescind the invitation when you must.

Your value is heavier than gold,

your hands hold more than the world.

Sister, you are mine, and I am yours, and we

can own all that we need, together.

cigarettes for breakfast, bare legs in yellow light.
I'll make the coffee, wake you slowly,
let the day trickle in as it will.
you do not have to touch me so gently.
whiskey for lunch, porn in the afternoon.
wrap my hair around your fist, pull on me hard,
leave bruises, tracks on the inside of my thigh.
high in the sunset, take everything from me.
press me up against the wall, bare skin,
we'll show them all.
wine for dinner, fuck all night.
use my mouth like a miracle, the quiet that comes:
smoke on the ceiling, gin at midnight.
the drug of possession, intemperate lust,
long hours, cold touch under a quiet sky.

shouldn't there be a sunrise,
shouldn't there be singing birds?
there should be sky peeking through the foliage,
there should be flowers among the ferns.
at the end of this journey i am
struck most by the emptiness, i thought there
would be songs, i thought the rhymes
would arrange themselves in quatrains,
in neat stanzas all spelling out your name.
shouldn't your name be important,
shouldn't your face be close to mine?
there should be wind between the elm trees,
there should be peace between our tongues.

have i wasted my words? i have sent them,
dear little packages, all aligned and tied up with blood
to your doorstep, penitent, obedient.
still no unification of soul.
express, express, lack of conversation, a sense
that satisfaction can never be homed here:
there's no place like a home that doesn't exist.
how many more times do i have to say it,
home is where you are,
my heart is where you are.

have i wasted my words? i have let you
dictate them, direct them, march them single-file
down to the firing squad of your discontent:
i have let you consume entire ideas,
sentence by sentence, the
heart of me, the blood, the flesh, the words.
dear little parasites, still trying to sting their way
into your heart.

love song

seven spitting heads on the dragon:
seven lines laid out, you're hungry, we cannot abstain.
four horsemen, a chiming clock:
a razor and a mirror, dreams like white dew
that drip down the backs of our throats like water,
like rain, like floods. are you
a portent to the apocalypse, or are you divine?
you shine like the reflection of the moon in the bay:
white lines on blue ridges, crests
in the water, the smell of dead fish.
tea leaves, strange things. patterns on the wall.
slicing into nothing, the methodology of your hands
is magic to me, surely a sign of the end.
pillars of salt, cloudy and waiting for rain to
slice striations into the sodium, women
who cry blackened tears but slide sweetly
onto neighbors' sofas to partake in this repast.
cut the loaves, the fishes coming in
off the lines like a feast for the empty.

that all of my words should secretly scream

your name, your name, or is it yours? 

is a waste of syllables and stress. i am too young

to be so sad, she says, brushing ochre

into the lines of my eyes. she means well. 

tonight we will go downtown and find

the club, the dj, maybe even respite from you.

they will congratulate me on my birthday,

i will cringe at the reminder. once a year i feel less

present, more deadly, more full of illness. 

when the retch of gin spins me out

into the wet street, the glare of streetlights

brings pallor to the skin i wouldn't let her bronze,

i will stumble to the train alone. you left

a bruise along my hip bone from your grip. 

i make too much noise in the hallway, the neighbors'

shih tzu will wake anyone i haven't. when i 

close the door behind me, i will 

turn two deadbolts, the knob lock, draw the

chain, like any of that will keep me safe. 

if exhaustion is beauty i can be feminine enough

there is in fact something beautiful in what it does
for me: i can be
a quiet pool of depth, cold and smooth like water, but also
bright with fire, sharper eyes, longer claws.
which me do you prefer?
when you refuse to stay with me-- and
you do-- we will all
find out together, in the dark.

i wake 3am with nightmares that
make my skin crawl, or sometimes, wake
to the sound of my own voice saying no;
i do not need a key to unlock
what i was dreaming of that time, but i wish
you were here to cinch it tight again.

if exhaustion makes me beautiful then touch me

i may in this moment be worth
the weight of your gaze; how do you
judge me now? in deep purple, blessed obelisks,
spin me hand-in-hand on the deck
in the lunar spotlight, hushed by bright moths
and the heat of your skin,
so that i will land blushing at your feet.
no one will blame you for my imbalance.

Fill me with the old words, let the old neighborhood
make me pulse with the past:
Cardozo, where are you now? Are you
still a dark fantasy, still saxophones on streetcorners,
basement bars and all those beautiful men
who wanted to sell me on crack, sell me on x, sell me on molly?
Sell me myself back, Brentwood.
Once there was a time when I stood on concrete balconies
and knew who I was.
And all of you-- my East African dealers, my
2Ls at GW and the sociologists from Howard and the
kids from Northwest who just wanted to be on the hill and
my men of the acronyms, take your pick, who just wanted to fuck
in the bar bathroom, tile to knees, hands shaking--
are so far from me now.
Once there was a time when I stood on federal land
and felt some sense of ownership
over myself, and my body, and my future.
I stand on a different riverfront now, though the same
polluted smells rise from dirty water
and I wonder whether Mayfair remembers me at all.

you unsettle me, disrupt me, your words

like little teeth leave me pockmarked, harassed,

and I wish I could slip backwards

back to my comfortable haze of powder and syrup

and all the ways we learn to manage trauma

without words: since words leave us exhausted

and I am already tired of the bright lights

and the way they point to you and your microphone

things I will not apologize for any more

dont you fucking look at me like I'm not speaking your language
when I am using words to describe you that you don't like
we stand in my kitchen, shoulders squared off
but you won't meet my eyes
and I could claw your face off but I bit my nails down
so I'm reduced to words, motherfucking misogynistic liar 
standing in my kitchen like your body has a right to the space
like somehow this whole city is yours, from the lake
to the Motel 6 in Brecksville where you took her
I know you fucked her
I know you fucked her
I like that you had to drive that far south to feel safe

I have no home to take you to.
I nest in a small corner of an ill-lit manse;
the hallways are dusty with unuse, the kitchen
overrun by pests and smells.
I could bring you here, up the dark stairs,
and your hand in mine might steady me.
But the bed I might offer is bloodied,
stiff with memory. We might
flip the mattress, and the sight of
your back bent to the weight
would make me wet for the work of you;
but the old blood would seep through
and we would both be stained.
The transaction would be faulty;
the salt of your body would taste of violence
and not of lush, heated joy.
Where can I be but here? There is no Zion,
and I am content to be silent in the place
where all my secrets are housed.
Your body may be my Mecca but
I cannot lay down to pray.

from the first whisper

of your breath on my skin, from the first

instance of intimacy the whole of me

has responded to you, for you,

at the urging of you. 

you and your complexity:

dark and darkly articulate, the words of you

drape themselves like so much sex,

the scent in the room, the sweat

of my body, laid out wet. 

in this moment we are not competitors

and i do not judge myself against you;

instead against memories,

yours and mine, of years of lust:

how do i compare, my dear? how do i

measure up? 

acknowledge my deceit: i have come here

looking for safe passage, while telling you

that danger will suffice. but

the risk of you, quiet and intense, 

is what brought me in. 

if you don't pretend you are here for love,

then i won't pretend you make me feel safe,

and we will both climax harder for it. 

for my married lover

in this dim room you are sinless.

your skin, dark against the white bedding,

glows with your purity: i am drawn

and quartered with desire. 

your mouth opens in a slow oh

for the parting of my hands, i touch you,

oh you have missed my heat. 

he doesn't do this? he won't? i will

and i will numb you with the pleasure of it. 

i will keep you hot and restless

in a way that he cannot. you and i

and the craving of each other,

this is sacred, your skin on mine. 

for the parting of your legs i would commit

greater sins, but you, here, in

this dim room: you are blameless,

perfect, and silhouetted in sweat. 

what texting with me is like

Hey
(does this mean you're thinking of me does this mean you like me what are we gonna talk about why don't we ever talk on the phone any more) hi what's up
Not much, how are you?
(so you're not sharing anything so I shouldn't share anything that's even keeled right or is it vindictive I should share something small and unemotional) I'm good! Did you have a good weekend
Yup. What did you get up to
(I finished your book I had a panic attack I indulged in being a damaged little girl I went to church and told Jesus that I deserve you and then I drank too much) not too much, church, the usual.
Nice. How's your day going
(I wrote a poem about you I decided I hate you I decided I love you I lectured myself for thinking about you too much I decided the poem was shit) good enough. You?
Busy. I wish I had some time to relax
(Does that mean like less time working like more time with me or like I am just another demand on your time or I should leave you be more do you even like me) soon you can hopefully!
Yeah.

surviving

in my stronger moments i like to think
about what i would do if i saw him again:
that in that moment of recognition,
i might feel the strength of rage, the heavy ice
of hatred that enables me to do anything,
that i could be capable
of returning hurt for hurt.
in my stronger moments i feel the weight
of that cold hate coursing through my body,
my veins shrink around it, my heart
throbs painfully in the shock.
what it has taken me four years to realize
is that these are my weakest moments:
that my desire to recognize his gait on the sidewalk
or see the turn of his jaw as he rounds a corner
and the immediate, whole-body reaction
of anger or hate or anything--
is still a gift of control that i make to him.
the beat of my heart is mine to own.
the pace of my blood is mine to temper.
how dearly i would love to rake
claws down his face, to bite and pull away
with his heat, with his blood, with his pulse
caught hot and meaty in my mouth--
these fantasies are not germane to me, they do not
belong inside my mind or my body.
but when someone has forced their way in
to your mind and your body it is hard
to evict them, even years later, even when you are
feeling control, feeling capable, feeling strong.

I learned to swim years ago, in a pond
wreathed in cattails, crayfish, leeches.
We jumped in together, wincing at
the wet mud squeezing between our toes,
trying to ignore the immediacy
of our bodies in suddenly-sheer cotton.
I learned to swim with you,
skin to slick skin, there under the moon
with pale green waves lapping us
in circles under the stars. When we exited
we picked leeches off each other,
quick before they latched, throwing them
out into the woods, hoping they'd die.
I learned to swim bright and pale
with legs around your waist, pressed
close for physical heat, for the purity
of teenagers discovering each other.
In a wild sea now I try to keep pace
with the crests as they roll in,
foam over foam, pulling me out and away
from the squalid safety of the mud.
Here the leeches are too slow for me,
but the tide too quick; I will be
a beautiful blue-green corpse, unblemished
and frozen, motionless in my cold skin.

Hatred so palpable even my
secret-keeping mouth, iron-clad
and concrete walls, trenches
dug in steep against the external war,
cannot hold the front line--
even my tongue betrays
me, slick and hissing your name.
And what can
you say for yourself, that would
pacify me? That you were honest or
open or did what you
thought ought to have been right?
I coil hard against you,
unfairly weighted with stones neglected
and piled up from other battles,
other men, older nights.
Latent heat.
The heart of me twists tighter
and tighter, a copper spring conducting
all of the impulses of my body:
oh, how I am wet for you,
how I lust for the taste of you.
I learned hate the
same way you did, a gift unwanted,
bestowed forcibly when we were
both too young.
You find no commonality with me;
I find no sanctuary with you.

for what i feel tonight, here, i
will never forgive you.
this grudge
will be polished, carefully
stored up in the cement of my mouth,
tucked away behind my larynx
where it will feast on words
and oxygen.
for how you have made me feel
i will crush you
down to molecules, down to atoms,
between my knuckles
like so much stardust
till the carbon of you separates
from the nitrogen from
the arsenic and lead:
me and you and the elements,
poisons and all.
for your love of attention,
for your honesty in naming what it is:
this grudge will be
coal in my arteries, sedimentary,
compressed and chewing up my throat
till diamonds pour out of my mouth,
sharp and hard.

get tangled up with me,
be a physical presence-- i
want to smell, to taste--
the cigarettes on your fingers and
lips, the brush of you on
my skin, the hush of inhaling when
your tongue presses mine--
i predict the rush
of my body toward yours, of yours
toward mine.

if you want me, I will hold you up as the story you are:
complex, perverse, emotional, all kinds of greed--
as men are. I will hold you fast and know you
and make a present of my body. I will give you grounding
and make gravity for your soul. I will give you vinegar and wine,
I will lay you down at night and taste the journey of you
in my mouth, chin wiped clean. for you I would:
a small mixed baby, fingers clenched around my ribs, for him
too I agree to be broken. I will shed
skin like an old rind, my fire an unending burn
to slough off the pale in place of red.
I will give you my body as a trophy, mounted,
stuffed and burned clean, bright green eyes caught cold
(marbles in your palm, my eyes and my breasts)
that you can keep me-- I assume I am a prize, hubris!-- but
you will win me, either way. my blood is my charm
and I press it on you for answers, for solidarity.

I revolve lately around
the growing pile of things I
can give you: tokens, moments,
honey, salt, sex.
And what I might glean,
among your rushes in your field--
words upon words, tumbling sentences,
bright thoughts and slight verbs.
For this chance, I can
be Ruth, I can be docile or pretty
or patient, but I wonder
if maybe here, at last, the old rules
do not apply.

although I have never had you
in any way, and am not owed anything
by you, I circle around continually to
how I desire to come back to you.

you with your words and your line
breaks, do we make sense? do I?
I fear you will search me for love and,
finding so much disquiet, think me unlovely.

you with your definition and mind
and expansive thoughts, your activism,
your powerful way of walking thru the world--
how can I compete for you, or compare?

I cling mostly to ideas of beauty, of
interest or complexity, I string together
all of the depth that I can in hope that
it will differentiate my self for you.

because I am not beautiful-- because I
am more likely covered in ink and scars
and paint and poison ivy than not-- I think
I am obligated to provide veneer

except that in our moments together,
your honesty is so clear-eyed, so open-mouthed,
what can I do but be bare? to trust that
you could learn to think me lovely

for all the mistakes and missteps
that are an integral part of my directionality.
you are your own compass, and mine
points north, to home, and peace.

expecting myself to defy expectations, I am
rarely content with the effort it takes
to polish this skin, tighten the silhouette, push
and pull my features into beauty--
in my natural state, covered in dye and ink
and mosquito bites and scars-- I cannot content myself
with solely an improved appearance.
I aim higher than your skin, higher than
your dick or your heart or your mouth.
bring me that mind, let me perch on the edge
of your reflecting pool, singing
and preening, let me find myself in
the quiet hours in this copse of trees.
when I find myself in your thoughts and have not
put myself there through art or artifice,
I may choose to be content at last.

someday you and I are safe together
some afternoon in sunshine we are full
of words and love and comfort,
you and I, paired to wild flowers
climbing up between the sidewalk squares.

I want to sing

it's not that I want to join a choir
more that I need you to hear the noise I make
and admire it
I could spend my life happily
as a backup singer, harmonizing deftly
around the steady leadership of your tune
and all I need you to do in return
is acknowledge my use of my own voice
it has been a long time coming